Mericcup Shorts
by Corona Frost
Summary: 1. Family friends who haven't seen each other for years... because of a classified secret. 2. Coming soon...


Their fathers had been friends. That was the only thing they had in common. Friendly fathers. Although their fathers visited each other often, they had never seen each other for three years.

~:~

"Why do you even listen to him? He's probably goin' to try something stupid on you to get you to smoke or something." Blue eyes swiveled to meet the brown ones of his best friend.

"He's my brother." Hiccup replied, "Beside, what he did last time was totally for my popularity levels, which he was concerned about." He stood, throwing away a crumpled napkin.

"Dude, he tried to get you to listen to vulgar music. I mean VULGAR music. It's worse than the stuff I listen to." Jack grunted, standing to follow his friend, "Besides, you don't _need_ to be more popular. Every girl in the whole building blushes when you walk by."

Hiccup snorted good-naturedly, "That's because you walk around with me. And I don't think this is one of his weird ideas to get me popular." _I hope not_.

"Look, Hic." Jack grabbed his chin, "The guy's not good for you. He's a walking tyrant. _And _a heavy drink-" He stopped short, catching a glimpse of Hiccup's glowering face.

"He's not like that anymore," He clenched his fingers, nails digging into the soft skin of his palm, "He changed, I know he did."

Jack didn't push it. Snoutlout, the boy in question, had always been Hic's childhood role model- until he went to college and came back a wasted young man with no scholarship left over from his foolish tangents. "At _least_ let me come with you."

Hiccup paused before leaving the cafeteria of their school, "If I'm not back by five, you can come get me."

Jack nodded. It was better than nothing.

~:~

"Come on, Merida. Let's go." Rapunzel bounced around the corner of changing room, where her best friend was hiding her face from the scantily dressed girls prancing around the changing room.

Merida turned around to face her friend and froze stiff, "RAPUNZEL! YOU STILL HAVE'NT CHANGED! HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WE'RE READY TO GO?!"

Rapunzel patted her on the head, smiling, "Because we _are_ ready to go, my dear."

Merida paled, "You're going out in that?" she asked, weakly pointing at Rapunzel tiny two-piece swimsuit.

Rapunzel rolled her eyes and wrapped the towel around her waist. "Happy?"

Merida gave her a sick look, but moved to the door anyways, convinced that if she spent one more second waiting for her friend, surrounded by half-naked girls, she would easily lose her mind.

They started walking home, Rapunzel chattering happily and Merida trying to avoid looking like they knew each other.

She heard a gagging noise and stopped short. She knew that noise.

Her ears started ringing and she had to blink repeatedly to keep from fainting. She saw the phantom of someone lying, still and pale, on the concrete of the sidewalk.

Rapunzel stopped her chattering and saw her friend, doubled over, hands on her knees, breathing hard and long. Her blue eyes wide and panicky.

"Merid- " Then she heard it. A gravelly whisper, coming from the alleyway, deep and soft, cruel and harsh.

"Don't worry, I know your weakness. But one sip of this, and you'll never want to stop again. Come on bro', have it." The voice faded into an even softer whisper, and Rapunzel cautiously stepped close to the wall and peeked around, into the blackness. There were two figures. The larger one, a male, was evidently the one doing the strangling and was trying to force something into the younger's mouth. The younger was thrashing about violently.

"Mer, let's get out of here." Rapunzel whispered, trying to get her friend to stand straight.

"No." She whispered. "We need to help him." He eyes started to roll back into her head, and Rapunzel fell into a panicked frenzy.

"Merida." She softly muttered, her fingers twitching nervously, "We need to g- "

A crash interrupted her, and she heard a voice, hard, but strangled and thin. "Sorry, brother." A moan seemed to echo through the small, cramped alley as a bout of coughs commenced, making Rapunzel's knees shake.

Merida fell to her knees, crawling to the entrance to the alley just as the boy emerged.

She looked up to stare at him through her mangy red curls, and he looked down as a look of horror crossed his blood-covered features. Then, with dark red blood dripping from his chin onto Merida's face and his own white shirt and blue tie, at exactly four fifty-six, he knelt down and fainted with a groan.

"Oh, God." Was all he said as he slumped down.

Merida took one look at his cold body and the memories that filled her mind caused her own fainting, the quick movement causing blood on her forehead to spray onto Rapunzel's pink and white towel as she stared in horror at the two bodies in front of her, one of them, her best friend, and the other, bleeding freely.

~:~

He woke up with his face imbedded in something soft, and all his eyes could see was red. His legs felt cramped and squished, but he felt like he had some space above his head. So, closing his eyes, he wiggled up.

Soon enough, he had enough space to lie down properly. He felt himself on an odd angle and realized that he was sprawled on a car seat. He opened his eyes.

~:~

Merida woke up to someone screaming. She immediately tried to stand up and attend to the injured, out of natural instinct. She banged her head on the top of the car, and screaming, knelt down to find herself face to face with Hiccup, which led to more screaming.

~:~

Jack and Rapunzel were talking when the pandemonium began.

First, Hiccup started screaming in the car, upon which Jack started fumbling for his keys. Then, there was a bang, upon which Rapunzel realized that she had hidden Jack's keys in her purse. Then, Merida started screaming too, upon which Jack started rummaging through Rapunzel's bag viciously. Then, they both started screaming on a whole new level of terror, upon which Jack turned Rapunzel's bag upside down and unlocked the doors, which none of the morons inside had thought to unlock themselves.

As soon as the doors were unlocked, the two of them stumbled out of the vehicle from opposite sides, just as the doctors came out of the hospital to collect the injured, who were no longer injured, but mortally scared.

~:~  
>"Are you going to tell me about it?" After a big fuss and refusal for a checkup on both sides, the two boys were driving back home. Jack was at the wheel.<p>

Hiccup sighed, his head rested in his hands, "Why _her_?" he shook his head, "Of all the people to meet after being half-strangled…why her?"

Jack stopped the car, and Hiccup looked up, "Hic. I know you don't want to tell me, but you always say that I should tell other people what's hurting me. Don't you think you should follow your own advice?" Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his friend lean back and stare at the ceiling.

"She… Do you want the long version or the short?"

Jack shrugged, "Long's okay, I guess."

"She's my father's best friend's oldest daughter. Astrid and her used to hang out a lot." Astrid was Hiccup's younger sister, a rowdy punk with an occasional sarcastic streak. Jack had once had a crush on her.

"They used to spend all their time together. So, when Merida had her thirteenth birthday party, Astrid went." He sighed, closing his eyes, "it was three years ago, and I was fourteen years old. I was just getting into the idea that I wanted to become a lawyer and used the opportunity to wear a nice shirt and tie."

"Anyways, I didn't have much to do there, so I kind of' wandered off to a plot of unowned land behind their house, and sat on this huge tree there."

He shook his head again, and Jack realized that he was trying to keep the memories out of his head, "For reasons I have yet to understand, she came outside to see me. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, dreaming of becoming a great something or the other. I didn't even realize that she was there. And she…"

He paused blinking. Jack suddenly realized how hard it was for Hiccup to tell him this, but he wasn't about to give up a good story out of the goodness of his heart.

"And then?" he asked, a sly smirk appearing on his pale face.

Hiccup looked away, his face hot, "Do I have to talk about it?" he muttered, looking away from his best friend.

"If you don't, I will find a way to weasel her name into every awkward place humanly possible under the sun." Jack said firmly. Hiccup scowled at him, and then looked away again.

"I'll just make this clear. I did not do anything to hint to this, okay? What she said come out of nowhere." Jack was interested now.

Hiccup closed his eyes, "She asked me, like you may have already been able to guess, if I liked her."

~:~

Jack was finally finished laughing and hitting the steering wheel, almost crying from amusement. Hiccup gave him a cold look and was about to get out of the car when Jack caught his arm, eyes shining with glee, "Then what?"

"Then what _what_?"

"What'd you say?"

Hiccup rolled his eyes, "No, of course."

Jack laughed a little, but tugged on his arm again, "So why did you faint?"

Hiccup froze, his face flushing red, his hand on the car door.

"I'll dig up everything anyways, Hiccup. You of all people know that my fingers are on the pulse of the school. I would go as far as to spreading dirty rumors about you two. And it _won't_ be fun." Jack grinned as Hiccup gave him a condensing look and let go of the handle. He had learned to trust Jack on these matters when he was in second grade.

Jack had managed to get every girl in the class to believe that Hiccup was an evil alien and that they shouldn't talk to him. This hadn't bugged Hiccup at all until a girl told him that Astrid looked just like an alien too, which got Hiccup mad and in a bucket of trouble for punching a girl. And Jack hadn't even been scolded.

Hiccup looked away, "She climbed to a branch higher than mine and jumped down, crashing into me halfway down and using me to cushion her fall. She then grabbed my tie and strangled me until I fainted." As he said it, he pulled the collar of his shirt down, sporting a collection of jagged scars circling his neck.

"So, my brother knew that holding my neck was probably the best way to get me to do what he wanted, and he was quite right. I was in a lot of pain back then. I was hospitalized for a long time. That's the kind of pain I feel when someone grabs my neck."

"Wait, did she call your parents and tell them that she had strangled you? Have you seen her since then? What about Astrid? What about your Dads? Did she get punished? Did you?"

"Our parents are still friends, but whenever they visit or my parents go there, I make and 'unexpectedly urgent trip to Jack's house'. My parents understand, and don't push me. Astrid and her just floated apart because they became two completely different kinds of punks, and…. That's it. Can I go now?"

"Did she call your parents?"

"No, they found me there after the party, unconscious and quite black and blue from the fall…I almost died."

Jack looked at him straight in the face with raised eyebrows, "And you like her?"

Hiccup gave him a surprised look first, then looked away, his brow furrowed, then got up and left the car, to hell with the consequences.

Still sitting in the car, Jack smirked to himself. Hiccup had a lot to learn about how to treat the girls you're in love with.

~:~

"I strangled him three years ago at my thirteenth birthday party."

"You _WHAT_?" Rapunzel ran to catch up to her.

"I know you're going to ask anyways, so there it is. When I was thirteen, I strangled him at my birthday party."

"Why?"

"I was mad at him." There was no way that she was going to tell her about Hiccup saying he didn't like her.

"For what?"

"Nothing" Merida's tone of voice told Rapunzel not to push it any more, for her own sake. She decided to change the subject to something she was a little worried about.

"What would you do if I told you that I like his best friend?"

Merida spun around, hair flying, face flaming. "What?" She asked, he voice dangerous and low. If this was a joke, Rapunzel was in trouble.

"I'm not joking." She said quietly, "Before now, I thought Jack was a stuck-up, king-of-the-whole-world guy. But now…I really like him."

Rapunzel was sure that the heat of Merida's gaze was fiery fury was enough to melt the skin right of her bones, and she shrunk away, a little sad that her best friend wasn't willing to trust her.

Merida grit her teeth, trying to regain composure, "Are you serious?" She asked carefully. Rapunzel hesitated a little, realizing that she had to be REALLY serious about this to get through to Merida.

Deciding that not being able to sleep all night because of his smile floating over her head was at least reasonably serious, she nodded.

Merida sighed. Talk about complicated. "I don't really mind. I just don't want to see _him_ again."

Rapunzel nodded, and watched her friend go to her physics class. She glanced at a table in the 'senior area' of the cafeteria, where a table in a dark, hard to notice corner sported two boys.

She left the cafeteria, deciding to ask Jack for details on what had happened later.


End file.
